What accounts for the existence of gay people? (Part Three/FINALE)

What if I told you gay people, impulses, sensibilities, what have you, were not only natural, but necessary to the progression of the human race, and the evolution of the universe?

Hint: That’s what I’m telling you. Or rather, suggesting to you.

In the past two posts, I’ve mostly talked (written?) about some thoughts on gay identity (as opposed to purpose), on what links us together. I brought that up, because I think identity is linked to purpose. When I bring up Nick Benton’s core gay identifying traits “gay sensibility,” an alternate perspective, and a constructive non-conformity, the “purpose” or I guess “benefits” of such traits on a just human society becomes clearer.

I realize I just kind of rattled off the three traits in the first post without really going into them, but essentially what they suggest, (in Benton’s words) is that gay or so-called “homosexual” passion “is directed toward a different [non-heterosexual] kind of procreation, one which advances the pursuit of beauty, justice, knowledge and truth” (127). Notably, the over-sexualized notion of gay culture is absent from this identity.

In my second post, I elaborated on gay identity more in terms of what it is not (or should not be) rather than what it is, because I think that distinction is important. So much of what outsiders perceive of gay identity is its sexual nature. Social conservatives would decry it as sexual “deviancy,” and they’d have numerous examples for that from the sexual liberation in the ’70s, and even in today’s age of Grindr and hook-up culture. Now, I’m not here to shame people for their sex lives, or to suggest that they’re doing something wrong, but overwhelmingly, the focus both inside and outside of the community has, since Stonewall, been focused on the sex aspect of gay lives. It is clear from the very name used to identify us—”homosexuals.” “Sex” is literally in the name. From that perspective, what differentiates us from everybody else is how we act in the bedroom, and that’s it. I disagree.

It is not sex alone that defines us, because in that view, living as a gay person is a new invention. Yes, anal intercourse has been documented since the Greeks, but the sole pursuit of same-sex relationships openly is rather new, and due to this newness (in the sex-focused view) it is easy to write off the gay “lifestyle” as a “fad,” as something that will “pass.” If we look at being gay as solely sexual it becomes easier to see it as a “deviance,” a “sin,” an “aberration.” However, that thinking ignores the many, many queer individuals who have lived and contributed greatly to human society for as long as that society has existed.

If we base our criteria on what constitutes a gay person (throughout history) by today’s open same-sex relationships, we erase a vital part of people’s identity and undermine today’s LGBT community. This is where Benton’s gay identifiers come into play, and how they are useful. While same-sex erotic passion is difficult to document in our forefathers’ time where there may not have been an outlet to act upon their desires (or discuss it explicitly), it is easier and more appropriate to look for notions of gay “sensibility,” which includes heightened empathy for the underdog and the historically disadvantaged (i.e. women, children, and people of different races/cultures). We can also look for evidence of men and women who did not conform to social standards and lifestyles, and those who brought alternative queer perspectives to social discourse as members of our tribe. Benton is quick to point out that these are not solely gay traits, of course, but the gay social position brings out these qualities more often than not (ESPECIALLY when a queer individual’s sexual nature is stifled to such an extreme degree, as has been the case for much of history).

With this more nuanced and socially-important gay identity, one of Benton’s core arguments becomes stronger: that “homosexuality” is not an “aberration or chance of nature, but that it is built into the very fabric of the unfolding of the universe” (127). He describes our purpose as part of the universe’s “dissymmetry,” whose role“is to shatter an inertia derived of the simple, dominant binary male-female-reproduction-survival nature of things in favor of not merely survival, but the progress and advance of the species.” How transcendent and inspiring is that for the purpose of gay existence!

While it’s kind of a crazy proposition, he looks to the work of renowned atomic physicist Maurice Goldhaber to back up his idea of the universe’s “dissymmetry.” Goldhaber died at the age of 100 back in May 2011, and in Kenneth Chang’s obituary in the Times he describes the scientist’s most famous contribution as the discovery of “the ghostly, perplexing subatomic particles known as neutrinos.”

Neutrinos, produced in the fusion of the Sun, other stars and in the radioactive decay of elements, flood the universe; trillions of them zip through every person every second.

In the late 1950s, physicists discovered that neutrinos, unlike anything else in the universe known until then, appeared to violate mirror symmetry.

That was odd and unexpected, because looking in a mirror does not usually alter the rules of physics. For example, consider an archer shooting an arrow. As the arrow flies through the air, one could imagine the tail feathers rotating clockwise. In the mirror image of the arrow’s motion, the tail feathers would rotate counterclockwise. […]

But the mirror versions of neutrinos were found to behave differently compared with those that exist in the real world… By observing neutrino-producing transmutations between two carefully chosen elements, Dr. Goldhaber and his collaborators showed that neutrinos, unlike arrows, always rotate in one direction (counterclockwise, it turned out) and never the other.

So Benton attributes this mumbo-jumbo to a “fundamental ‘left-handed’ component to the elemental, sub-atomic structure of physical reality” (139). And this “dissymmetry” moves the universe away from “static equilibrium” to “negentropic” development, which manifests itself to us, in human society, through phenomena such as left-handedness, right-brain domination and homosexuality, among other things.

As RuPaul put it, LGBT individuals are “an extension of the power that created the universe.” No more, no less. Healthy, natural differences are “essential core components of the universe, not accidents, random deviations, corruptions or perversions” (Benton 139). They are by-products of the self-development of space and time. This concept of the universe’s unfolding can be applied to any theology, whether one believes in a Creator or not. Would not a Creator see the benefit in difference and variety? Why can’t LGBT people be one of God’s intended, beautiful, perfect Creations? Would He really make a person with a destiny to fail (i.e. their gay nature is a product of sin)?

We are poets, with an affinity towards more global perspectives, with idealizations of beauty and knowledge, and those of us with an erotic passion beyond the norm “are essential to help drive the development of the individual, civilization, and therefore the universe, forward,” in Benton’s words. How wild, preposterous even, are his claims? But somehow, they strike an inherent chord in me. I look around at what LGBT people contribute now and to what they’ve contributed in the past (of which I’ll be learning eternally), and I can see the alternative perspectives we bring to philosophy, current events, politics, art, and science.

What drives LGBT people to the arts, and to liberal ideologies that forward a social vision of equality, peace, and freedom, if not an overarching purpose to defy norms and convention in the pursuit of truth and progress? I know there are a million holes in the argument, and a million ways to write me off as too abstracted and too idealistic, but there’s also a million-and-one reasons that thinking of gay existence in this way can bring positive, inspiring, and effective change. Change that benefits the lives of LGBT youth, adults, and the elderly, as well as every human being on this Earth. Our differences bring us together and are to be celebrated, not denied. We should use our perspectives to add to the conversation, rather than hide. We are here, we are Queer, and we are not going anywhere.

And on that note—thanks, y’all, for dealing with this three-post arc, that I most certainly could extend to four, five, or probably ten parts, but for all of our sake I will keep at three. This is merely an initial exploration of the titular question, and it is a surfaced one at that. I want to continue to nitpick at these ideas and elaborate upon its tributaries in future posts. If you have any opinions or questions, be sure to comment, email me, or message me on social media.

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Published by Joshua Smalley

Joshua Smalley is a writer, editor, and playwright. He’s a staff writer for The Liberty Project, Popdust, and The Journiest, and has additional bylines on Insider, EDGE Media, Solar Power World, and Windpower Engineering & Development.
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